Professor Dai Dingcheng, doctoral supervisor in Musicology and Director of Macau Urban Music Research Center at our faculty, has recently published his new monograph Research of Macau's Folk and Ritual Music in the 20th Century with The Commercial Press (HK) LTD.

Spanning more than 400 pages, the monograph is the culmination of many years of fieldwork, documentation, and systematic analysis. It discloses a wealth of valuable historical materials and images for the first time, and includes a large number of music scores collected directly from the field. Focusing on representative works of Macau's folk and ritual music, the monograph offers an in-depth examination of their musical structures, cultural contexts, and social functions. In doing so, it fills a long-standing gap in the field, provides an important documentary model for future studies on Macao's musical culture, and makes a significant contribution to the preservation and transmission of local musical heritage.

The monograph received high acclaim from senior scholars across Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau during the recent academic forum -"Tradition and Inheritance: Investigating Urban Music in the Greater Bay Area China" Scholars and Graduate / Doctoral Students Forum 2025 hosted by City University of Macau. Renowned musicologist Yu Renhao, former President of the Commercial Press of the Central Conservatory of Music, praised the book as "one of the finest works I have read in this field in recent years—rich in historical detail, clearly argued, well-evidenced, and beautifully presented with illustrations and musical notations. It not only fills a research gap both in China and abroad, but also significantly expands the breadth and depth of ethnomusicological studies". Esteemed musicologist Professor Fan Zuyin, former President of the China Conservatory of Music, also lauded the publication as "a rare and invaluable contribution to cultural research rooted in origins".

The author Shen Yutian is an assistant at the Macau Urban Music Research Center and a doctoral student (Class of 2023) in Arts Studies, specializing in Musicology.